If they can communicate with satellites, high flying UAV or aircraft - they can almost certainly communicate with other ships.
That is the only logical conclusion
Given that the Gallium AESAs are amongst the most expensive part of the Type-052D, and will still be useful for the rest of their lifetimes - I doubt we will see them upgraded. It would be better to build new ships with Gallium Nitride AESAs instead
There are only 39 modern AEGIS destroyers so far, and I expect the Chinese Navy to be aiming for a fleet of 90 AEGIS destroyers in total.
They probably will be upgraded to a new generation of AESA module. Even for the reasons of logistics and maintenance, it needs to be done. Even if you think the ship doesn't need to, and the old radar's performance remains adequate, it
still needs to be done.
Think of it. After some time, production of the Gallium Arsenide modules would have stopped, with the remaining stock going into warehouses as spares. With the introduction of new ships, the new ships will be using Gallium Nitride modules, and all production will be shifted to using Gallium Nitride.
Over time, as the 052Cs and 052Ds wear out their arrays and burn out older the modules, the remaining stock will eventually be depleted. Electronics burn out, and they will eventually expire, much sooner than the rest of the ship. All this kit is highly modularized. They are meant to be taken out and replaced quickly. An AESA array has similarities to a server farm. Like any computing architecture, everything is designed in consideration for things to come, including upgrades.
So what you are going to do, is to refit the radars to use the new module standard that is current and available at the time of the refitting event. They get new modules, the cooling system is overhauled, and the backend is updated to account for the new modules.
It will not affect the production of new ships. Instead, the more modules you make, both for new ships and for refitting older ones, the lower the cost of each module, driven purely by volume amortization. It also makes things a lot easier. For example, low production units would require FPGAs. FPGAs are temperature hot and expensive, not to mention China ain't exactly the leader in this field. You can forego FPGAs and use ASICs instead. ASIC runs cooler, and is cheaper, but requires a large production run. You want to order the ASICs specific to these radars by the many thousands, and the only way you want to justify such a large volume to plan the total number of ships you want to produce over time that would use the same module, plus the number of existing ships you plan to upgrade with. The 40+ 052C/D lifetime total would represent an enormous market for such chips to add to the demand for the new builds, that it would make a serious dent in the price of such chips when compared if these chips are only going for new builds.
Think of the Sovremenny refits. The radar refits are mostly sidegrades. Fregat MAE to Type 382, Mineral ME to Type 366, MR184 to Type 344, MR123 to Type 349, MR90 to the Chinese illuminators. At best there is only a bit of a slopegrade here. The main reason why the Russian ones are being replaced is for maintenance reasons. The Chinese cannot maintain the Russian ones indefinitely as parts and warranty supplies run out. Much easier to replace with the Chinese radars where they have control of the parts supply.
As for datalinks, there are quite a few forms of datalink antennas. The ones I see with PLAN ships often take the form of poles, either long or short, or small cylinders. These are likely to be monopoles or dipoles. They can communicate with another ship easy, or with a plane or helicopter low in height and closer to the horizon. But as the plane goes up and over the ship, the signal gets weaker and weaker until it reaches a null area. For this, you need a datalink that is shaped like a dome, with a dish shaped antenna on a gymbal. The antenna would follow the airplane or satellite as it goes across the sky. You can also see a few of them in PLAN ships, and one of them is called "Lightbulb", which the Mineral ME Dr link or its Chinese derivative the Type 366-2. This is used to obtain targeting data against ships for over the horizon. If you look at the Type 022, it only has the dipole kind of datalinks, but if you look at the 056, you will see both.
